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Hey, about your energy?
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FINALLY, something feels relevant to talk about other than that thing, Reader! (I get tired of talking about it, too... but that fights with my urge to only write about relevant things, and... well let's talk about the new thing). Energy! I wrote the following in my little journal the other day:
The main thing I've learned is... We don't protect our energy because deep down we don't believe we are impactful or important enough for our energy to matter in any real way.
When I reflect on my epic three-year whirlwind with coaching, this comes to mind a lot because once I became aware of how janky my energy was and started to pay attention to it, all these unrelated things started getting better. Or at least, I thought they were unrelated. Things like...
This is also why sometimes people give me a ?? look when we first start coaching together. They expect me to start dropping criticisms and reframes to "fix" what they're doing... and I actually start with things like:
Because that was my revelation... If you're treating your energy like it's nothing important...You can't get anything important done in any real sustainable way. When you don't protect or guard or care about your energy, the good things you achieve with it will just be jolts of good ideas here and there, often that don't feel good so you don't connect the dots or you don't sustain it for a long time. It's like throwing a ton of tiny little spears at Moby Dick. Yeah, you might hit it... but... uh... you are going to fall off your little boat into the sea and that whale is going to move on and heal, my man. But hear me out... If you can put some boundaries around your energy, saving some of the good stuff for yourself (not your wild and crazy home life, whatever it looks like)... If you can 1) more often and 2) more easily find that centered, confident place with your inner mentor, where answers come to you just as often as interesting questions do... That's when your spear grows, your boat grows, the whale shrinks... you start to have more agency and control and all those good things you think you'll have if you just "worked harder, longer, better." If there's just one takeaway from this that doesn't involve Moby Dick (or get my email banned for saying Dick three times?): Your energy is important. Not just "energy" (yeah, yeah, yeah Sarah, shush). But YOU. YOUR energy, Reader. In your life. And behind your screen right now. I believe that with everything I have. Everything I have, Sarah G. 📖 Wise Words“When you are walking down a city street and not paying much attention—perhaps you are downtrodden by some confusion—and come suddenly upon a rose bush blooming against a brick wall, you may be struck and awakened by the appearance of beauty. But the rose is not beautiful. You think the rose is beautiful and so you may also think, with sadness, that it will die. But the rose is not beauty. What beauty is is your ability to apprehend it. The ability to apprehend beauty is the human spirit and it is what all such moments are about, which is why such moments occur in places and at times that may strike another as unlikely or inconceivable, and it does not seem far-fetched to say that the larger the human spirit, the more it will apprehend beauty in increasingly unlikely and inconceivable situations, which is why there is such a great variety of art objects on earth. And there is something else we should say about the apprehension of beauty: it causes discomfort; and by discomfort I mean the state of being riled, which is a state of reverberation." - Mary Rufle, Madness, Rack, and Honey
🖋️ Writing TipKnow your role. Not in a creepy way. But like my last email where I said everything starts with audience first?That's only true most of the time. If you're writing for expression (fiction or nonfiction), your audience kind of doesn't matter? (This is also why it's so hard to teach writing, because the rules often contradict themselves ;-)). And for what we do in B2B writing, often we're trying to "express" on behalf of a brand... which is a special kind of convoluted and difficult. So when you first sit down, get some clarity on what your role is. Are you exploring? Developing? Communicating? Building? Urging? Expressing? All of it can be done with words. 📡 What's Up With AI
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Personally, it's been a pretty crappy time over here, Reader! Now, I know that's not sexy. Most people would rather hear about... crushing my goals. My kids eating vegetables. My deep pockets due to online business excellence. But... none of that is true. I've been sick since November with autoimmune crap that just. won't. stop. My kids seem to only eat vegetables when I hide them in chocolate peanut butter smoothies. And my shift to full-time coaching led me to inner peace but smaller...